This is how the first episode of the summer celebration of all that is great about Major League Baseball sounded yesterday: Boo! Boooooooo!

Tonight's All-Star Game in Kansas City can only be less grouchy than its warm-up act, the Home Run Derby, which was won by Prince Fielder and very definitively lost by Robinson Cano.

Fans at Kauffman Stadium jeered Cano on Monday night and chanted the name of their hometown hero, Billy Butler. In their view, Butler was snubbed by the New York Yankees second-baseman, who was tasked with selecting three American League co-workers for the derby and hinted he would pick the Royals slugger only to overlook him.

Did the taunting affect Cano? He said not, and that he was tired after arriving after 4am from a game in Boston. Still … in Arizona last year he hit 32 home runs and won the competition. This year, he mustered zero. A crowd-pleaser after all, then. By the end of his at-bat this no longer felt like a sporting contest; more like a 40,000-strong Schadenfreude convention.

Missouri's answer to Las Vegas' Fountains of Bellagio, the water feature behind center field, glowed blood-red as Cano swung the bat and clouted balls that were easy prey for the gloved children playing catch in the outfield who attacked each sinking shot with the bloodthirstiness of piranhas but the maladroit charm of newborn puppies.

"If you play for the Yankees you get booed everywhere you go," Cano said afterwards. But rarely with such sustained vigor, and with so little cause. Cano's three picks were easy to justify before the contest and all made the second round as the American League outscored the National League 61-21 overall.

As Cano swung and squirmed, the video director roused the masses even more by cheekily flashing up pictures of the watching Butler. He has a good, but not great, tally of 16 home runs so far this season and will feature this evening: why the fury, good people of Kansas City?

One theory: because sport only has meaning when there is rivalry and controversy, however ersatz. Another: fans like to see famous names from across the sport, but it's hard to root for someone who's not on your team. You can be impressed by rivals' talent, but not impassioned.

After 32 home runs last year, Robinson Cano couldn't manage a single homer this time around. Photograph: Jeff Haynes/Reuters

The casting of Cano as super-villain did add drama and decibels to an otherwise subdued occasion. For a celebration of strength it felt strangely underpowered and overlong at almost three hours. More slumber party than slugfest.

The constant thumping music and rabble-rousing yells of the stadium's play-by-play announcer failed to adrenalize the crowd, making the ballpark feel like a nightclub where no one's dancing. Perhaps it is harder to view home runs with a pure, childlike joy in the post-steroids era.

Matt Kemp, of the Los Angeles Dodgers, was another imploding star. Arguably the most talented hitter in the National League, Kemp has been sidelined with a hamstring injury for six weeks and the rust showed as he hacked at pitches with all the finesse of a serial killer stabbing a random victim.

He claimed only one home run. More important than questioning Kemp's fashion sense – oh, those golden shoes – his underperformance sharpened the feeling that he should never have risked his rehabilitation by playing in the first place. As planned, he will not feature tonight.

Carlos Gonzalez and Andrew McCutchen also exited in the first round, then went Carlos Beltran and the potent Mark Trumbo, who lost a swing-off to Jose Bautista. Fielder found his rhythm early in the final and beat his opponent from the Toronto Blue Jays 12-7 to become the second man to win multiple titles, after Ken Griffey Jr. The Detroit Tigers hitter launched 28 home runs in total, including two at 476ft, the longest of the night.

MLB had encouraged players to tweet during the contest, though their comments were mostly, and understandably, bland. Media interaction of a more old-fashioned sort had come earlier in the day at the All-Star press conferences and player interview sessions held in suites at Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Kansas City Chiefs football club.

Back for one game only is Tony La Russa, who retired after managing the St Louis Cardinals to World Series success last year. The 67-year-old was quizzed about his decision to start Matt Cain, of the San Francisco Giants, on the mound for the National League tonight rather than RA Dickey, the veteran New York Mets knuckleballer, who has better statistics and a better story.

"We want to reward Matt Cain for a career of excellence," La Russa said, wearily raising the deflector shield. Then came the player media availability.

It's an annual all-you-can-chat buffet: two 45-minute slots with all the National League and American League selections, players sitting side-by-side at tables in a room that surely provides the most multimillionaires per square foot of anywhere on the planet.

The sessions are notoriously intense, aggressive and crowded. Hundreds of reporters waited to enter the room before the start. They strained at the barrier, ravenous for quotes with their prey in sight; 28 Days Later with Dictaphones.

First victims were the freshest blood. In each league's schedule, the two uber-phenoms, Mike Trout of the Angels and Bryce Harper from the Washington Nationals, were seated at the entrance. Trout is 20, Harper only 19. There was pathos in the placement, with Chipper Jones, the 40-year-old Atlanta Brave whose season is a farewell tour, sat at the relative obscurity of the far corner of the hall.

David Ortiz arrived late. He held court wearing shades, perhaps to protect himself from the dazzle of his jewelry. At one end of a row of Texas Rangers was Yu Darvish, the Japanese pitching sensation in his first American season.

Cool, tanned and handsome, he answered questions through his cool, tanned and handsome translator. "There've been a lot of different adjustments but the food, the culture, is fine. The hardest was adjusting to the baseball – finally getting a feel for it," Darvish said.

Forty-five minutes of being asked questions ranging from the banal to the bizarre is as much a test of a player's professionalism as facing a 95mph fastball. No one handles the scrutiny more calmly than Derek Jeter.

In public, the 38-year-old Yankees shortstop is smoother than a beach pebble, all jagged edges eroded by waves of questions, game after game, year after year. He was dressed in a suit (no pinstripes) and tie. Like Kemp, he exudes the charisma and poise unique to the rich, famous and brilliant. His teeth could light a ballpark in the event of a power cut.

"I want to talk to Jeter a little bit more," Trout said. "The way he handles himself, little things I haven't learnt yet. He was my role model [growing up]."

With a record five rookies on the rosters tonight, this year's All-Star Game is as much a statement of faith and excitement in the future as a thanksgiving for past achievements. And Butler might even get a go.